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Today's News

The Evergreen Park and Recreation District board voted 4-1 to continue to work with Center for the Arts Evergreen to come up with a long-range plan to address the needs of the park district, the Center for the Arts and the community at large.

It was not determined whether the result of the collaboration would be a new combined community center/arts building, although the building concept was not ruled out.

The best skating season in at least four years, along with a new weight room at Wulf Rec Center, gave Evergreen Park and Recreation District revenue an unexpected boost in 2009.

The year started on a pessimistic note, with news of the banking crisis and mounting layoffs, but the late-October cold front that plunged temperatures to 17 below turned Evergreen Lake into a hot ticket.

The result was 48,000 skater-days for 2009, an increase of 71 percent, compared to 28,000 in 2008 and only 16,500 in 2006.

Rocky Mountain Academy of Evergreen, a public charter school, unveiled a proposal Feb. 11 to remodel the lower level of one of its three buildings to make room for a cafeteria/gym and special classrooms.

Since 2008, the school has been housed in three buildings south of Elk Meadow Open Space and west of Evergreen Parkway, off Bergen Peak Drive.

The 8,000-square-foot space would consist of a music room, a technology resource center, a Spanish language classroom, an art room, teachers’ lounge and a cafeteria that can double as a gymnasium.

More than 50 Evergreen Middle School students have been practicing nightly in anticipation of their performance of the musical “Annie Get Your Gun.”

The show, which is the full-length version of the musical, will run more than two hours, according to Missy Calkin, instrumental music teacher and one of the show’s directors. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18 and 19 in the school’s cafetorium. Tickets are $5.

Jefferson County Schools is the largest Colorado district not to recently win voter approval for a mill-levy increase. The weight of cutting $32 million now falls on our county’s educational system. Coupled with the recent change in the school board, one wonders about the direction in which education is headed.

February has arrived, with more snow. If I can be patient for one short month, it will be March and hopefully more spring-like.

People often ask what the first flower to bloom in the spring is. I have always answered with the three earliest blooming native wildflowers around our immediate area. They are the Easter daisy, which often blooms in late February and which is soon followed by mountain candytuft and spring beauty.

In 1989, I was working for the Rocky Mountain News, and times were good. Really good. Our circulation was soaring, and ad sales were humming along.

Fast-forward 20 years, and many things have changed. The Rocky has disappeared, and several other major dailies have followed that same path to extinction. Craigslist has drained away classified advertising. The current economic downturn is taking its toll. And of course readers are turning to the Internet for their news and away from print publications.

In 1999, the New Orleans Saints traded all of their draft picks — and their first- and third-round draft picks the next year — to the Washington Redskins for the first pick in the NFL draft. With it, they selected University of Texas running back Ricky Williams. The Saints went 3-13 that year, and within three years Williams would be playing for the Miami Dolphins.

Barbara Wright is a mild-mannered, gentle spirit whose interests run from quantum physics to international business. Her true passions, however, are the horses that she tends to at Harmony Horseworks, her Conifer-based horse sanctuary, and art — specifically, her acrylic and oil paintings, which frequently have her beloved horses as the subject.

Fate snuck up on Conifer freshman Sam Delmonico like a polar bear in a blizzard.

As the annual Power Cup wrestling dual against rival Evergreen began Feb. 4 at the 135-pound weight class, Delmonico knew he would be wrestling last. But the 130-pounder never thought and never allowed himself to entertain the notion that the decisive match would come down to the wire.

Delmonico pinned Evergreen’s Brandon Maxey in 1 minute, 38 seconds to break a deadlocked team race and give the Lobos a 40-34 victory, winning back the traveling Power Cup for the first time since 2008.